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Mr. Chesterton Made His Confession

Dan Graves, MSL

"How in blazes do you know all these horrors?" cried Flambeau [a
criminal in one of Chesterton's fictions].

The shadow of a smile crossed the round simple face of his clerical
opponent. "Oh, by being a celibate simpleton, I suppose," he
said. "Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing
but hear men's real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human
evil?"

Chesterton wielded one of the great pens of his day. His Father Brown
detective stories are as delightful to nibble as cinnamon apples.
Renowned in literature, Chesterton was also a passionate and humorous
apologist for the Christian church. Especially the Catholic church. As a
young man he showed considerable literary talent and began to edit a
little paper. In time this became his life's work. He did a lot of
criticism. He had an uncanny knack of seeing what was crucial in any
author's work and the clarity to smell the real worth or the real flaw
of any argument.

Paradox was his forte. Paradox, said Chesterton, "is truth
standing on her head to attract attention." As used by Chesterton
paradox is either a statement that at first glance seems false but
actually is true, or a "commonsense" view exposed as false. He
used it so frequently it could become tiresome in his longer works. But
in short essays it is scintillating and refreshing. Here is an example
on the topic of history from The Everlasting Man, his paean to
Christ which shows that the spiritual is more real than those things we
consider tangible reality. "So long as we neglect [the] subjective
side of history, which may more simply be called the inside of history,
there will always be a certain limitation on that science which can be
better transcended by art. So long as the historian cannot do that,
fiction will be truer than fact."

Chesterton could be absent-minded. Once he dropped a garter. While
down on the floor groping for it, he found a book and began to read it,
the garter completely forgotten. He would stand in the middle of
traffic, lost to his surroundings, deep in thought. Still, he had
tremendous concentration for writing and was ever fixed on the eternal
truths that make the wisdom of this world foolish. Thus he could say
succinctly of the agnostic George Bernard Shaw, "He started from
points of view which no one else was clever enough to discover and he is
at last discovering points of view which no one else was ever stupid
enough to forget." His witticisms were repeated everywhere.

On this day, Sunday, July 30th, 1922,
Chesterton took a walk with Father O'Connor. His 400 pounds were to be
baptized into the church that he had defended all his life. Looking for
his prayer book he accidentally pulled out a three penny thriller
instead. At last he found the text and made his first confession. Asked
why he joined the Catholic church Chesterton replied, "To get rid
of my sins."